How did you do on your resolutions last year? By some miracle, we managed to complete half our goals last year (Jacob finished more. What a responsible guy)! Now we have a choice. Do we see this as the glass half empty or half full?
Even though we barely checked back on our goals, I like to think that we made it happen because we put it out into the world. Plus, I always feel satisfied crossing a task off a list. I don’t care what list it is! It just feels soooo good.
WORD OF THE YEAR
This year the word I’m picking is MODERATION. Everything in moderation whether it’s food or work or alcohol or sleep. 😳 At first, the word balance seemed more attractive to me, but balance has always been so elusive. I’ve been chasing it all my life and have never found it. I’m convinced it doesn’t exist. Or it cannot be sought after for its own sake. However, I do believe that you can have more of a balanced life if you just do everything in moderation. Trick your brain into thinking that! 😜
TAKING A STEP BACK FROM BLOGGING
Blogging has clearly taken over our lives. As much as we love what we do for a living, we know we can sometimes go overboard. I don’t remember the last time we’ve gone on a date night without feeling like we had to document everything. Since we’ve been traveling more and have lost any sort of daily routine, it’s been especially hard drawing healthy boundaries between work and life.
I want to remember to stop and smell the roses. Hear the music again. I want to take a step back and actually enjoy the scenery rather than being focused on capturing it. I know for successful goal setting you’re supposed to have concrete (S.M.A.R.T.) goals, but I could really use some help coming up with ideas on how to shut my brain off.
17 IN 2017 GOALS
⬢ Completed ⬡ Still on the list
TRAVEL GOALS
- ⬡ See at least 175 waterfalls in Oregon – We saw 28 – oops!
- ⬢ Visit a new country – Kyrgyzstan
- ⬢ Visit one new World Heritage site.
- ⬡ Visit twelve new National Park Units – We visited 9 including Great Basin NP
- ⬢ Do one major hike or backpacking trip – W Trek in Patagonia
- ⬢ Go climbing in one new climbing destination.
PERSONAL GOALS – failed all 😂
- ⬡ Go on a date night twice a month without a camera or any social media.
- ⬡ Get off work by eleven every night.
- ⬡ Meatless Mondays (unless we are invited out somewhere)
- ⬡ Climb at a V5 level for Esther and V6 for Jacob – at V3 and V4, but started on some V4s and V5s.
- ⬡ Study a language once a week for at least 30 minutes (Mondays).
- ⬡ Read one more new book than last year (8).
BLOG GOALS
- ⬡ Finish our second e-course / e-book or create a product we like.
- ⬡ Give the site a makeover.
- ⬢ Expand the Local Adventurer team and hire on new writers.
- ⬢ Post to the @localadventurer instagram account daily.
- ⬢ One second of video a day.
GOALS FOR OUR CATVENTURERS
As much as we love to travel, we really miss them when we’re away from them. They are our family and this year we’re partnering with Swiffer to put together some goals for them too!
- ⬢ Play with them at least 15 minutes a day – We pet them and give them attention in between whatever we’re doing, but we rarely dedicate time to them. We want to give them extra attention this year and help them play and get exercise too.
- ⬡ Leash train them to successfully go on one hike (at least Mika).
- ⬢ Feed them more protein – We feed our cats mostly dry food, and every so often treat them to canned food, which they go crazy over! If food can make me happy, I’m sure it can make them happy too, so I want to feed them wet food at least 3 times a week.
- ⬢ Clean up after them once a week – They’re good about keeping themselves clean, but they seriously get fur everywhere! Since we’ve been having guests over this year (some who are allergic), we’re going to try to furminate them and vacuum and Swiffer our home once a week. Right now, we use a Swiffer Sweep + Vac and the Swiffer Duster for all our hard surfaces and a vacuum for our carpets.
- ⬢ Routine vet visits – As they’re getting older, they’ve had more health issues. We’ll plan on taking them to the vet at least once a year for a check-up so that we’re more proactive in being preventative rather than just reacting every time they get sick.
PREVIOUS YEARS:
16 in 2016 (The Year of Being Brave)
15 in 2015 (The Year of Intention)
14 in 2014
13 in 2013
What goals are you working on this year? Anything we can work on together?
ESTHER + JACOB
Esther and Jacob are the founders of Local Adventurer, which is one of the top 50 travel blogs in the world. They believe that adventure can be found both near and far and hope to inspire others to explore locally. They move to a new city every year and currently live in Portland, Oregon.
Thank you Swiffer for sponsoring this post! They’ve been such an amazing brand to work with. We love how they let us be us and give us the flexibility to be creative with our posts. As always, all opinions are our own. Thank you for reading and for supporting the brands that make Local Adventurer possible.
